So far - so good

It's a country that promises something for everyone, which is probably why you voted it your favourite long-haul destination in this year's Guardian and Observer Travel Awards. Jonathan Freedland explores

It is the Caribbean and the English countryside, Antarctica and California, Sydney and Gleneagles all rolled into one. It is the department store of holidays, promising everything you could want under one, clear sky.

Like any good store, some of the lines are tried and trusted and none more so than the brochure's promise to transport tourists back to the England of the 1950s. For years, the clichéd view of New Zealand was that the green hills and polite, provincial manners combined to provide a kind of heritage themepark for the nostalgic Brit.

Go-ahead, modern Kiwis - particularly those on the North Island - loathe that idea, of course. They insist NZ has become a cool, Pacific nation looking forward towards Asia rather than back to the old country. They're mostly right, but the British influence has not vanished completely. The South Island still boasts towns called Middlemarch, Cromwell and Palmerston, while Christchurch might have been prised out of the Home Counties and air-dropped from the sky.

Even the trendier North Island has reminders of the first settlers' country of origin. Head east out of Auckland, around the Firth of Thames and into the Coromandel Peninsula, and you'll see enough hills, valleys and sheep to remind you of the Scotland or Wales that the pioneers left behind.

In Auckland itself, you can sample a taste of home by bedding down at the Aachen House, a boutique hotel built in Edwardian style in 1913 for an English doctor. The chintzy bedrooms, sunny conservatory and warm hospitality will remind you of the best of Blighty.

But nostalgia-travel is not what it used to be, at least as far as being the top-selling product in the NZ holiday-shop. In the past decade, the country has cultivated an altogether different lure for a new generation of traveller, becoming the number-one playground for danger-junkies. On the backpacker circuit, Queenstown on the South Island has become an essential stop - the place where gap-year daredevils try their hand at paragliding, tandem-parachuting or extreme sports that promise a face-to-face encounter with the Grim Reaper.

A special badge of honour is reserved for those who have notched up the Awesome Foursome: bungee jumping, skydiving, whitewater rafting and zorbing. (For the uninitiated, to zorb involves being strapped inside a giant plastic ball and rolled down a hill, hurtling at such breakneck speeds that gravity plasters your body against the sides.)

For those who don't fancy the taste of their own heart between their teeth as they careen in a jet-powered boat through an inches-wide canyon, NZ has often seemed like an afterthought, a bolt-on extra to Australia, only worth visiting if there's time.

But that is to forget the country's role as the variety pack of holiday destinations, with a little bit for everyone. If a beach vacation is your thing, for example, look no further. NZ, with its long, thin, banana shape, has just short of 10,000 miles of coastline - shared between just 3.8 million people. The result is a land of empty, pristine beaches, a place where you can find a stretch of fine sand and clear water, spread out your towel - and not see a soul all day.

And the beaches are not all the same. In the Coromandel, you can leave behind the tourists on Waihi beach, take a half-hour walk high up in the mountain bush and descend on to Orokawa, site of an ancient gold mine where the sea crashes and curls with white surf, as if in a sound-and-light display.

Or you can head in the opposite direction and see the shore from a whole new angle - from the top of a horse. An hour's drive west out of Auckland takes you to Muriwai Beach, where a couple of gentle mares can be yours for a morning's canter, courtesy of the local riding centre. Don't worry if you're new in the saddle: the horses are blessed with an intuitive gearbox that makes them amble along at strolling speed - if that's what you want. Once you are ready to pick up the pace, they will sense it - galloping through the surf and racing over the flats of black sand that glitter in the daylight, as if embedded with precious jewels.

A couple of hours are exhilarating, not just for the thighs but also on the eyes. Close by Muriwai Beach is a gannet colony and a famed stretch of surfing water: whichever exotic creature you enjoy watching, there's a perfect view from here.

But no self-respecting beach-hunters will ever forgive themselves if they leave it at that. They'll want to take the coastal road a tad further south and make for Karekare. It may be on the other side of the world, but you would recognise it immediately. For Karekare was the location of perhaps the most memorable movie beach scene since Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr rolled around in From Here to Eternity. It was here that Holly Hunter was washed up, along with child and beloved instrument, in The Piano.

You can see why New Zealand-born director Jane Campion dragged her entire cast and crew down the tiny, windy roads and sharp hillsides to reach Karekare. The beach is impossibly wide and almost absurdly beautiful - not in a picture-postcard way, but with a rugged, austere grandeur. The sand is dark and stretches the length of a football pitch before it touches the ocean. The cliffs are sheer and stark, the rocks bold and craggy - one curve forms a natural bay that the locals call The Cauldron, where the surf crashes and roars like hellfire. Visit here in early January, the height of the summer season, and you will be able to run, whirl and even dance on the sand without embarrassment because you will have the whole, magical place to yourselves.

If that does not satisfy the appetite for sun and sea, South Island has some jewels of its own. Most Kiwis rarely take the short flight between the two islands, so the south is more roomy and unspoiled. For an absolute pearl, the destination ought to be the Abel Tasman National Park.

This corner of the coast has been entirely preserved from development, some of its bays and inlets accessible only on foot or by boat. The result is an area that, if it were anywhere else in the world, would have been over-run long ago with hotels, nightclubs and beachside restaurants - but which is virginally untouched. You can spend a day sea-kayaking from one natural lagoon to another, or hiking along the bush trail, encountering no sign of tourism other than your own good self.

Now a clutch of eco-friendly tour operators arrange three- or five-day trips through the Abel Tasman park - with guides who will show a novice couple how to steer and paddle a two-person canoe in the ocean or simply navigate your path through the thick, dense bush. Either option is magnificent, whether it is the satisfaction of docking the boat on a deserted beachside or scaling a hillside crowded with silver ferns before reaching a perfect view.

A spot such as Torrent Bay would look quite at home in a Caribbean brochure of paradise island beaches, complete as it is with turquoise blue water and bone-white sand.

To add to the appeal for the non-backpacker, the family-run Abel Tasman National Park Enterprises has a string of ultra-comfortable lodges along the coast - so you can unwind with a glass of New Zealand chardonnay while a first-rate chef rustles up dinner. Like NZ itself, Abel Tasman offers two kinds of holiday - adventure and luxury - in one.

The choice does not end there. If a California-style trip is your thing, NZ has it covered. Outside Auckland, whose wharfside fish restaurants and sushi bars would not be out of place in San Diego, there are plenty of towns such as Titirangi - funky, granola communities where the organic cafés jostle for space with the new age health stores. On South Island, you can stroll down Nelson's Trafalgar Street which, despite the name, owes more to San Francisco than to SW1. Here the vegetarian eateries, stripy sweaters and green awareness meetings would make any Californian feel at home. NZ even has its own Pacific Coast Highway - not quite the same as Route 1 from LA, but with views of pelican colonies and native wildlife that are just as spectacular.

But perhaps the closest connection with California is the wine. Like South Africa or Australia, NZ has a thriving wine industry specialising in the light, warm taste of the new world. For a tourist, there can be few more joyful ways to pass a day than with a visit to, say, the Neudorf vineyard outside Nelson. Anyone is welcome to take a table in the garden, spread out a picnic and turn their face toward the sun - and their nostrils toward the grapes ripening all around. It is an idyllic spot, matched only by the prospect of dinner around the corner in Mapua - at a local legend of a restaurant called Nature Smoke, right on the water. There, naturally, smoked fish and seafood served with fresh vegetables are washed down with local wines. Get there early, to guarantee a table and enjoy the sunshine.

If it is mountains that you're after, South Island has a range larger than the French, Austrian and Swiss Alps combined, while the North has its very own volcanic region (to say nothing of the geysers and hot springs of Rotorua). Add to that the fjords, glaciers, lakes and rainforests, and you should always have plenty to admire.

Even the political tourist has reason to visit New Zealand: the country now has a radical left-wing, pro-republican government that is fulfilling all its promises while remaining popular. Now that, surely, is worth travelling across the world to see.